Haley and Solt Lurkyurg

[snowblizz]

If the Order go out of their way to keep Belkar hale and hearty in the first place, they pretty much are responsible for his subsequent actions (and we've had long spiels on how inaction is a poor excuse for letting evil prevail.) The casts' assorted filibusters, to the dubious extent they might be representative of the author, have no especial consistency on this point.

Agreed about Durkon etc. turning a blind eye, though. I mean, for all the talk about what a good influence on Belkar his peers have been, I suspect there's been some drag in the other direction.

The beings pure Lawful Good running their part of the multiverse conceded to Roy's "rationalisation". Belkar restrained is much better then Belkar released. Since Lawful Good can't allow muder of Evil as preemption apparently. Chaotic Good probably would.

[Kish]

(and we've had long spiels on how inaction is a poor excuse for letting evil prevail.)

Where? ...

[Lacuna Caster]

Wow. I'm really getting angry about this, aren't I?

The beings pure Lawful Good running their part of the multiverse conceded to Roy's "rationalisation". Belkar restrained is much better then Belkar released. Since Lawful Good can't allow muder of Evil as preemption apparently. Chaotic Good probably would.

If Roy had wanted Belkar dead, all he had to do was keep him in his cell and let the justice system do it's work (I can only assume that AC law has the death penalty, given their culture is fine with ritual self-disembowelment. And if not, Shojo could nudge the verdict.) He also never makes any such argument for attempting to 'harness' Nale, Sabine or Thog, even though the logic is identical.

[Lacuna Caster]

Where? ...

The general question of whether or not to let the world end. And whether or not abandon Elan to the bandits. Both essentially sins of omission.

[Kish]

Oh. I see. Those are some truly awkward positions you've stretched into, particularly when you're describing Roy's argument against the gods destroying the world as "inaction is a poor excuse for letting evil prevail."

[Lacuna Caster]

Oh. I see. Those are some truly awkward positions you've stretched into, particularly when you're describing Roy's argument against the gods destroying the world as "inaction is a poor excuse for letting evil prevail."

Why is that an awkward position? Roy considers the Gods destroying the world to be wrong, and considers his allowing it to happen by inaction to be wrong. He wouldn't be trying to stop it otherwise.

I'm not saying that Roy, per se, hasn't made some effort to curb Belkar's worst excesses, but to the extent that one can read some kind of authorial statement on the nature of morality into the text, 'you are not responsible for other people's actions' isn't really there.

[snowblizz]

If Roy had wanted Belkar dead, all he had to do was keep him in his cell and let the justice system do it's work (I can only assume that AC law has the death penalty, given their culture is fine with ritual self-disembowelment. And if not, Shojo could nudge the verdict.) He also never makes any such argument for attempting to 'harness' Nale, Sabine or Thog, even though the logic is identical.

Assumptions eh. Why not assume it's a rare punishment. Have you looked up the arguments, because it was pretty solid. Also harnessing Nale, Sabine or Thog wasn't on the cards, and infact discusses the problem of the "death" penalty for them specifically. He could use Belkar, and had done so. And the Lawful Good agreed that was the best he could do. He has also promised to bring Belkar back to prison, though knows Belkar is headed for permanent death-or-something soon anyway.

Roy is doing the best he can with the resources available to him. Lawful Good validated his choices as the only reasonable one.

Roy doesn't want (even) Belkar dead, that's why he gets to keep calling himself Lawful Good.

[Lacuna Caster]

Roy doesn't want (even) Belkar dead, that's why he gets to keep calling himself Lawful Good.

Dozens of people wound up butchered in Cliffport (and I can only assume elsewhere) because Nale was neither effectively restrained nor terminated after his first encounter with the Order. If Roy doesn't want anyone dead, the strip has not made a clear-cut argument for his handling of unrepentant mass-murderers.

I have no reason to believe the Deva is any more of a moral authority than Roy, because they were both written by a real-world human being, and I would like his story to minimise the mental gymnastics I must perform. So, no, I'm not going to assume the death penalty is a rare punishment in a city where assassination is a primary tool for career advancement- I'm going to assume it's pretty standard fare. Sorry, not sorry.

[hamishspence]

In a bonus strip around the time Roy presented "Belkar with magical leash" to the rest of the party, a point was made of how Belkar would have been looking at some 30-odd years imprisonment.

Suggesting that, while the death penalty exists in Azure City, for crimes like treason:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0420.html

it's not applied for lesser crimes like second degree murder (which was what Belkar had been expecting to be charged with).

[SavageWombat]

The beings pure Lawful Good running their part of the multiverse conceded to Roy's "rationalisation". Belkar restrained is much better then Belkar released. Since Lawful Good can't allow muder of Evil as preemption apparently. Chaotic Good probably would.

I suspect Rich considers "values free will" as an important part of the Good alignment more than many D&D writers.

[martianmister]

it's not applied for lesser crimes like second degree murder (which was what Belkar had been expecting to be charged with).

And it was only second degree thanks to Roy's interference.

[Hamste]

And it was only second degree thanks to Roy's interference.

It was manslaughter because of Roy's interference.

[Crusher]

Dozens of people wound up butchered in Cliffport (and I can only assume elsewhere) because Nale was neither effectively restrained nor terminated after his first encounter with the Order. If Roy doesn't want anyone dead, the strip has not made a clear-cut argument for his handling of unrepentant mass-murderers.

I have no reason to believe the Deva is any more of a moral authority than Roy, because they were both written by a real-world human being, and I would like his story to minimise the mental gymnastics I must perform. So, no, I'm not going to assume the death penalty is a rare punishment in a city where assassination is a primary tool for career advancement- I'm going to assume it's pretty standard fare. Sorry, not sorry.

Except that Snowblizz addressed this point. The Order, after catching Nale, Thog and Sabine in Azure City, has a significant discussion on the very point of what to do with them. Varsuvius is frustrated they can't seem to keep Nale down and argues they should simply kill them outright. While everyone else isn't comfortable with it, they aren't entirely against it until Elan notes that imprisoning them is probably a safer long-term option since they don't know how many minions Nale has running around who could just gather some left over fingernail clippings and get him rezzed.

Varsuvius even suggests doing some kind of soul-binding to keep them imprisoned even after death but that's viewed as entirely unacceptable. The possibility of Nale breaking out of prison and killing even more people is absolutely central to their discussion which is why they give him to Azure City, figuring that its probably the most secure prison they're aware of (particularly since Haley gives them suggestions on how to improve security) and at a minimum Nale would be surrounded by Paladins.

[Psyren]

To some extent, I think disassociating from Belkar's murders was something all the rest of the Order did--"not as a punchline" wasn't something that mattered to the people who died as a punchline, after all. And, in general, Rich seems very averse to the idea of being responsible for someone else's actions. (Durkon is Lawful Good. It's very nice for his morals that this nauseates him. Why isn't he intervening?)

I would consider this inaction to be a grey or black mark on Durkon's record, but to the angel's point, he's a mortal, not an archon. "Durkon is Lawful Good" is a general statement, not an absolute one - he can have off-moments like this and still be overall LG, just like Roy did and was.

[SilverCacaobean]

Acess to raise dead is one issue. The cost is another. Think of it like this, yea you can get raise-death lifeinsurance, but the cost is more than a lifetime of wage for most NPCs. The only ones really raking in the gold are the adventurers. One of the few very wealthy characters we have hit upon is the Oracle, and lo and behold he has a resurrection service, in no small account base don his ability to know exactly when he needs it. It's a faux medieaval world, it sucks to be poor. The dirt farmers won't have any ability to pay for a raise dead.

And the cost has to be in diamonds. So e.g. even if Durkon would gladly raise dead as many times as needed, where will he get the diamonds to do so? Sure Darth V can just planeshift to the Earth plane to get them, the Azurites may not have access to diamonds even should they have the resources to trade some.

So in short, there are reasonable in-universe explanations for why deaths is not quite as trivial, and the Giant does go out of his way to showcase them. If you are a fairly high-level adventurer who is friends with a cleric then death is no issue. For others it likely much much harder.

Fair point about diamonds. I hadn't considered that at all, to be honest. But now that I have, is it really that forbidding? If strip 677(sorry can't post links) is not just a joke, what actually matters is that you pay 10000 (or whatever the cost). So as long as there actually are diamonds, they could keep getting more expensive and the spell would work.

Anyway, I never really said they were trivial. It's just that in the back of my head, I thought that death was more like a coma in cities. That was because they could raise people in azure city but I had failed to consider that the high priest himself was there! So it was a faulty assumption anyway.

As for the healthcare thing, I has assumed it was kind of like public healthcare where the government would have a "resurrection pool" which would come from taxes, ready to (help) raise people. But it appears that's also a faulty assumption, if the dwarven society and Durkon's mom is any indication. She can't even get her arm back.

So you're right is what I'm saying.
Still doesn't answer about Solt though...

while the Giant wants to put certain aspects of common D&D behaviors under the moral microscope, he is completely disinterested in doing so with respect to Resurrection.

The Giant has explicitly said that Resurrection and Teleport tend to get in the way of good storytelling. He is not going to bend over backwards to examine their potential peculiarities, even if he will use these magics in carefully measured dollops.

After all, Celia declaring that Belkar or the Order owes that corpse 6000ish gp for a Raise is an argument that Haley could probably win under their dire circumstances, but it is just not interesting enough to include in the story.

I actually agree that they're both terrible, or at least too readily available in d&d. I'd make them higher level. However he included them in the story, so they need to get addressed. And they do, mostly.
My problem lies mostly with the characterization of Haley (who seems to have a soft spot for npcs). Celia too but she isn't a main character so I care less.

As for the argument, I agree that it's not interesting but I disagree that the position that would lose would be that. Taking Solt with them to see if they could do anything is very reasonable and he wouldn't even slow them down. They had nothing to lose by trying but money (which the may or may not have at this point but at some later point they will have).

Someone did say that raising the guard was likely an arrangement by Shojo though. That would mean that the order is generally unwilling to part with money to resurrect people. On the other hand, Roy implies here (861) that he'll get Girard's relatives raised. (The fact they got exploded later is not relevant. They could say the same about Solt and then the universe contrives to destroy the body)
I'm getting mixed signals here

Maybe they don't resurrect Level 1s? Also maybe it's an unwritten rule in d&d that you don't raise people left and right...

[...] is it that implausible that economics and scarcity might also have a substantial impact on what common folks consider reasonable and plausible, independently of whether it's technically possible under the magic/science rules of the setting?

Not at all. I didn't argue that, really. I just had that thought about the cities which was wrong.

The Order actually do have the resources to acquire enough gold and travel around finding someone to sell them the rare reagents and someone to cast the spell, and it still took them hundreds of strips to get it done. I think that handing the next of kin a check isn't a realistic guarantee that the gnome will get resurrected. That, and if the dead gnome couldn't protect his chocolate bar with his life, do we really think his family would be able to hold on to a sack of gold for that long?

It took many strips because the death was a result of a crushing defeat that divided them. In a way it showed that while they had the tools to resurrect at their disposal, they were so powerful that a defeat that would result in one of them dead, would also result in the terrible mess that followed. So it only took the so long because someone so high level would die only in a situation like that. They would have no such trouble if they only tried to resurrect a low-level NPC.

Also failing to protect something from Belkar isn't indicative of anything, if you ask me. Though giving the next of kin a bag of gold to get him resurrected would be adding a middleman where none is needed.

Given how Roy got in his predicament to begin with, I can understand why nobody was in a hurry to suggest another futile, costly gesture.
Of course, it is a little implausible that Celia would know enough about the economics of the world to realize that resurrecting random NPCs isn't a reasonable suggestion, or that even if she did, she would limit her suggestions/lecturing to reasonable ones, but I'm willing to write this off as Celia having a bunch of lectures on wide range of tangentially related issues, and only a finite amount of time to dump them on everyone around her.

You can't compare Roy jumping on a flying dragon to confront an epic lich sorcerer, to carrying a gnome, whose death they were responsible for, around in the hopes that they might be able to resurrect him.

I can't see why it isn't a reasonable suggestion or why you think that Celia would suggest it as opposed to Haley thinking it on her own (Maybe you don't like Celia and don't like the suggestion so you put them together because only she would propose something so unreasonable). I understand that resurrecting random NPCs is not reasonable but random NPCs whose death you caused is reasonable. (I still don't understand this NPC thing. I mean, in d&d they are characters of the dm and people ignore them when they feel like it because they are playing a game but this is a story. What are they in this context? If this wasn't a d&d story would you say the same with NPC replaced by e.g. "person", or not?)

Besides these people are big on costly, futile gestures if we are to judge by their trying to stop Xykon (the world ending wasn't on the table yet, so they weren't in it for themselves). They are powerful, they could stay alive if he were to conquer the world. If saving the lives of others was futile to them they wouldn't be there, doing what they do.

Let me restate what I proposed to avoid confusion and keep in mind I don't actually think it would make for a better story. I'll bold it so people who don't want to read the whole post see it.

Take Solt on the cart and carry him with Roy. This would not slow them down. See if they can get him to a Cleric. They were looking for a cleric anyway. When they get them to a cleric resurrect him if they have enough money not to gimp themselves by paying. (They could arrange for Belkar to pay like with the guard. Again if the order gets gimped by that, don't pay). If they couldn't pay then, they could pay after defeating Xykon. And the thing that most people have ignored is that they could leave Solt's body behind the moment it becomes inconvenient (Not slightly inconvenient, mind you. Within reason).

The reason I care about this and started this topic despite thinking that it wouldn't make for a good story, is that I hoped someone would have an in-universe explanation for why they didn't do the above, that is in ...agreement(can't think of the proper word) with Haley's personality. As it stands, I feel the strip is dissonant. I think someone said that maybe Rich just forgot about resurrection which is very understandable. Still, it's a forum so we're discussing it as if it's as intended. It's either that or "Belkar is going to die now" predictions

My opinion on the Solt Lurkyurg story is that it might also be an oversight due to how Resurrection doesn't exist in our world. I too didn't think of it when I read the strip (great catch by the way! :-)). My mind was occupied by Belkar's crime, Haley's lack of reaction and Celia's utter lack of reaction, and Resurrection didn't naturally cross my mind. Maybe the Giant was so focused on these aspects as well and so forgot to include this option? Complete neglect of NPCs by the PCs is the most likely explanation nevertheless, I think.

Ah, you said that! I think that's very possible. Also looking at the next page I see it's also possible that they discussed a few possibilities off-panel and decided not to take him for reasons that are not for our ears.

As for the other thing you said, I think the Giant does as good a job as can be done with those spells. Without them it wouldn't feel like a typical d&d world, and I don't think he wants that. He does bend a little

If the Order go out of their way to keep Belkar hale and hearty in the first place, they pretty much are responsible for his subsequent actions (and we've had long spiels on how inaction is a poor excuse for letting evil prevail.) The casts' assorted filibusters, to the dubious extent they might be representative of the author, have no especial consistency on this point.

Agreed about Durkon etc. turning a blind eye, though. I mean, for all the talk about what a good influence on Belkar his peers have been, I suspect there's been some drag in the other direction.

I'm just gonna rant for a second, because this topic particularly annoys me. Gods, there are times when I want to smack Roy upside the head.

If you think about it, while this is a story as opposed to p&p d&d, if they were players they would be pretty non-disruptive. They all let the others do their thing, you know. When Belkar actually got disruptive by killing an important character the others needed, the DM pulled a town out of their a$$ and punished him That's the "OotS is really a game" interpretation.

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I keep running into role-playing advice for paladins that has this lingering subtext of "here's how to artfully ignore, rationalise or compensate for the sociopathic crap your team-mates pull", and I really don't think this is any particular virtue except in the nachos-and-basements sense of not offending a 35-year-old retail salesman's delicate eggshell ego. I'll be the first to defend black-and-grey morality, but the paladin does exist to police others' conduct- that's why they have detect/smite evil- and overlooking it's taint among those closest to them is simple hypocrisy. If you don't want that hassle, either don't include them during chargen, or don't oblige the PCs to get along.

Refusing to tolerate moral compromise is not a problem with the paladin and it's not even a problem with the paladin player. It's a problem with a game system that has for decades assumed that disparate characters generated in isolation can and should be shoehorned into the same party with ultimately uniform goals, thence to hold hands and trip down the yellow brick road. D&D has never supported real protagonism particularly well, but if it did, I would say that playing a character with an unbending sense of right is a perfectly valid role-playing choice, and there is no good reason why it should be marginalised in favour of Stabby McBabySteaks.

</end rant>

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I've loved paladins since gothic2 and not the nice kind, either. More like the pompous, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, unreasonably lawful and nominally good (was anyone good in that game?), with shiny armour and a stick up their ass the size of their hubris. That's how I like my paladins!

I can see how it couldn't work with other people though. It's best to make the party together with the others, I think, to make sure it works. If it's not possible change your character concept to fit (The weird part in what you say is that it is only the paladin who is expected to compromise instead of Stabby McBabySteaks). Or maybe the DM decided they want to make you fall via unwinnable challenge. It's weird why the paladin makes people do that. It's not like one can't put the other classes in unwinnable situations.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if the people at your table don't want you to have fun, you don't.

Wow. I'm really getting angry about this, aren't I?

This is just not worth getting angry about.

If Roy had wanted Belkar dead, all he had to do was keep him in his cell and let the justice system do it's work (I can only assume that AC law has the death penalty, given their culture is fine with ritual self-disembowelment. And if not, Shojo could nudge the verdict.) He also never makes any such argument for attempting to 'harness' Nale, Sabine or Thog, even though the logic is identical.

To address this, I'd say Roy already had Belkar as his employee when he realised what he was (and decided to keep him on a leash, sort of), while he was in no position to do the same with Nale, Sabine or Thog. That said, I don't think he would have gotten the death penalty.

Anyway, all members of the OotS have kind of an understanding that they are in a story (Elan is better though, the others remember it one day, forget it the next), so knowing those three would be recurring villains, they realised that even killing them wouldn't stop them from coming back. As for Belkar maybe killing him or leaving him would make him a recurring villain. Better to use him, than that.

Alternatively, they don't know any of that but know that high level characters (in a world with few of them) don't just end like that, without closure. So they chose to keep them at bay as efficiently as they can. So, genre savviness.

Or, if you prefer, they intended to use Azure city as their base of operations, so they would keep an eye on Nale. But they lost the battle.

I'm not sure if any of this is satisfying but that's the warped logic of that world. Roy does seem to believe that what he is doing with Belkar is the best he can do, though.


Anyway, why is nobody talking about Solt? Does nobody care about Solt?

[Mightymosy]

[...]


If Roy had wanted Belkar dead, all he had to do was keep him in his cell and let the justice system do it's work (I can only assume that AC law has the death penalty, given their culture is fine with ritual self-disembowelment. And if not, Shojo could nudge the verdict.) [...].

In a bonus strip around the time Roy presented "Belkar with magical leash" to the rest of the party, a point was made of how Belkar would have been looking at some 30-odd years imprisonment.

Suggesting that, while the death penalty exists in Azure City, for crimes like treason:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0420.html

it's not applied for lesser crimes like second degree murder (which was what Belkar had been expecting to be charged with).

And it was only second degree thanks to Roy's interference.

It was manslaughter because of Roy's interference.

Interestingly I thought about this recently: No matter how horrific Belkar generally is, that one "crime" he did by killing the Azure City prison guard wasn't actually that much of a crime, or/and at least, dare I say it, "morally justified".

Think about it objectively from his perspective:
- he was caught by a solider/warrior/police officer/member of a paramilitary order in a country quite probably outside of their jurisdiction
- the crime for which he was about to be incarcerated was not stated
- the person who arrested him used lethal violence against him and his companions
- that person coerced him and his companions into an armed fight (to be fair, he liked that, because he wanted to hear the ogres die)
- then he was forced into captivitiy again by lethal force, and dragged into a foreign country unconsciously
- he was thrown into a prison in that foreign country, separated from his companions and his stuff taken away.

How would you judge that?
I'd argue that he had a really good case there, if I'm not missing or misremembering something. Of course how the Azure City magistrate would judge, is something we don't know exactly, but from my view?
He had every right to assume that he (and his companions?) were illegally taken captive and were possibly subject to a fake trial and being punished (killed, imprisoned, tortured?) for a crime neither of them did.
Every person has the right to fight for their life.

[ti'esar]

I actually agree that they're both terrible, or at least too readily available in d&d. I'd make them higher level. However he included them in the story, so they need to get addressed. And they do, mostly.

FWIW, I would actually argue (and I think Rich would too) that there's nothing terrible about raise dead being a mid-level spell in a D&D game - people want to have fun in a game, and while there are circumstances where it can be fun to have your character make a heroic sacrifice, it would be extremely annoying for many people to lose them forever to random bad luck.

The problem comes in when you're trying to write a non-game-based story in a setting with that kind of casual resurrection.

[hamishspence]

- the crime for which he was about to be incarcerated was not stated

How would you judge that?
I'd argue that he had a really good case there, if I'm not missing or misremembering something. Of course how the Azure City magistrate would judge, is something we don't know exactly, but from my view?
He had every right to assume that he (and his companions?) were illegally taken captive and were possibly subject to a fake trial and being punished (killed, imprisoned, tortured?) for a crime neither of them did.
Every person has the right to fight for their life.

Miko gave the sentence here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0200.html

the crime was explained here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0203.html

and Roy explained that they were all accessories here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0204.html


In that context, given the amount of info Belkar had when he was locked up - he could reasonably be stated to be in expectation of conviction and execution for "being an accessory to crimes against existence" - thus, "fighting for his life" isn't too bad a description.

[Psyren]

Miko gave the sentence here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0200.html

It's worth noting however that she was deliberately disobeying orders. (Not that Belkar knew that.)

[hamishspence]

She was under orders to bring them back for trial - but telling them that the only possible sentence on conviction is death, wasn't specifically forbidden.

[Lacuna Caster]

In a bonus strip around the time Roy presented "Belkar with magical leash" to the rest of the party, a point was made of how Belkar would have been looking at some 30-odd years imprisonment.

I appreciate the info, but if Roy wanted Belkar dead, I have no trouble believing that Shojo could swing the verdict that way. (And really, that makes for a very odd justice system, given the context.)

Except that Snowblizz addressed this point. The Order, after catching Nale, Thog and Sabine in Azure City, has a significant discussion on the very point of what to do with them. Varsuvius is frustrated they can't seem to keep Nale down and argues they should simply kill them outright...

Yeah... I tend to find that strips with high word-count are a sign that some contrived nonsense decision is about to be rationalised. Nobody came to resurrect Kubota, and nobody came to resurrect the young black dragon, even though these individuals had to be at least as well-connected. Nobody raised Miko, Tsukiko, Samantha or Pa, because they had either pissed off the organisations that might have been inclined to or they were scattered to the winds. And nobody is presently coming to resurrect, well, Nale, for pretty similar reasons.

There have been decent arguments in this very thread about how resurrection magic is not trivially acquirable in the OOTSverse, even for high-level adventurers with extraplanar cohorts, which is why Mr. Lurkyurg was left to rot. So given that Nale's ability to escape the justice system appears to be hovering around 100%, I'd take the odds for 'kill it with fire'. ("Leave him in jail" is an even weaker argument given that Roy is explicitly unwilling to trust the Guard to contain a single Belkar, whom he insists on bringing on further adventures and, utterly predictably, continues to murder people.)

The fact of the matter is that Roy is personally attached to Belkar for sentimental reasons and invents excuses to keep him on-side, just as Elan is attached to his brother for sentimental reasons and the rest of the team scramble intellectually to avoid upsetting him. To reference the tome of fiends, they keep handling the Face of Horror as if it were A Worthy Opponent.

She was under orders to bring them back for trial - but telling them that the only possible sentence on conviction is death, wasn't specifically forbidden.

I think this was covered recently.

[Peelee]

Nobody came to resurrect Kubota, and nobody came to resurrect the young black dragon, even though these individuals had to be at least as well-connected. Nobody raised Miko, Tsukiko, Samantha or Pa, because they had either pissed off the organisations that might have been inclined to or they were scattered to the winds. And nobody is presently coming to resurrect, well, Nale, for pretty similar reasons.

Kubota and Nale were disintigrated with their ashes scatttered into the sea and the desert sands, respectively. Tuskiko was eaten. You'd need True Resurrection to swing those, and we have no indication that anyone other than Redcloak is even capable of casting that.

[Lacuna Caster]

Kubota and Nale were disintigrated with their ashes scatttered into the sea and the desert sands, respectively. Tuskiko was eaten. You'd need True Resurrection to swing those, and we have no indication that anyone other than Redcloak is even capable of casting that.

The argument I've heard against killing Nale is that some random minion off-panel might have kept some toenail clippings as a contingency plan for future resurrection, which could theoretically apply to just about any other high-tier antagonist, disintegrated or otherwise. If those other malefactors are down for the count, I see no reason why suitable cremation procedures would be different.

[Jasdoif]

You'd need True Resurrection to swing those, and we have no indication that anyone other than Redcloak is even capable of casting that.

Haley was worried about the possibility, though.

The argument I've heard against killing Nale is that some random minion off-panel might have kept some toenail clippings as a contingency plan for future resurrection, which could theoretically apply to just about any other high-tier antagonist, disintegrated or otherwise.

A frequently overlooked requirement for resurrection is that the body part must have been part of the body at the time of death. Collecting toenail clippings in advance wouldn't suffice.

[Mightymosy]

Miko gave the sentence here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0200.html

the crime was explained here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0203.html

and Roy explained that they were all accessories here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0204.html


In that context, given the amount of info Belkar had when he was locked up - he could reasonably be stated to be in expectation of conviction and execution for "being an accessory to crimes against existence" - thus, "fighting for his life" isn't too bad a description.

Actually I had forgotten that Miko had explicitly mentioned the Redmountain Gate destruction. Then again, that's not what Belkar did, it was Elan. And Miko tried to execute them, even before any trial...

[Peelee]

Haley was worried about the possibility, though.

Eh, she's a bit mercurial.

[Jasdoif]

Eh, she's a bit mercurial.

Is it mercuriality? Or is it that until she'd actually looked for a high-level cleric for hire herself, she just assumed there'd be one available for whoever had the money?

Or maybe she simply didn't want to take the risk with Nale.

[Peelee]

Is it mercuriality? Or is it that until she'd actually looked for a high-level cleric for hire herself, she just assumed there'd be one available for whoever had the money?

Or maybe she simply didn't want to take the risk with Nale.

Well, she lacks divination magic and was in occupied Azure City/Gobbotopia the whole time after Roy died, until she started voyaging for the Oracle. So if you could make a case that she could have been looking for a high-level cleric, I'll buy that.

[Kish]

The upshot of her argument in the earlier strip is "killing Nale would not actually eliminate him as a threat." The upshot of her argument in the second one is "THIS IS BAD." I think few people would come off particularly well if their words were scrutinized exactingly for consistency in radically different contexts talking to entirely different people. She's not a computer, regurgitating in response to any thought of True Resurrection "I estimate the chances of a level 17 cleric existing in this world at 48.92%."

[snowblizz]

and nobody came to resurrect the young black dragon,

That does not seem to be true. His mother simply lacked the ability to as mentioned here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0628.html

"the ashes dissolved into the swap". Which is one of those pesky makes-this-much-harder-than-it-could-be death situations.


And no, noone cares about Solt. That's one of many reasons NPCs are discriminated against by a cruel uncaring world.